Violent anarchists in France who have spent the last week pointlessly smashing shop windows and setting fire to cars have “shot the protest movement in the foot” by demonizing legitimate union demonstrators and allowing the government to crackdown with paramilitary forces, according to a leading French labor expert.

The actions of rioting black-clad youths in cities such as Lyon and Paris have scuppered any chance of derailing government plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, highlighting once again the fact that nihilistic communists who foolishly think they are the vanguard of some potent revolution are in fact the greatest ally of the state.

As we pointed out yesterday, there are two different groups protesting in France at the moment, those who are having a genuine impact, the union workers who have shut down entire areas of the country with fuel blockades, go-slow protests and picket lines and in doing so garnered the support of 70% of the country, and the idiot rent-a-mob anarcho-communists who will seize on any opportunity to run rampage in the deluded belief that they are standing up to the evil forces of capitalism by throwing a rock at a Starbucks window.

“The violence this week, amid huge country-wide strikes, blockades and demonstrations, has weakened the unions and played directly into the hands of the government, according to Bernard Vivier, director of France’s Higher Institute of Labour (a leading French thinktank),” reports France 24.

“The unions are embarrassed by this violence, which is led by anarchist elements of the unions who want to derail any attempts to negotiate with the government,” said Vivier.

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“It has put the brakes on the unions’ momentum, while they themselves recognise that reforms to the pension system are needed,” he added. “These violent protesters want to do anything possible to stop negotiations, and their actions have shot the protest movement in the foot.”

The riots have provided French President Sarkozy with the perfect justification to send in paramilitary forces to clear blockades at France’s fuel depots, and have also made his refusal to negotiate with unions look like a reasonable response.

The union workers in France should immediately distance themselves from the actions of the self-proclaimed anarchists if they are to have any hope of success.

Every time a car is set alight or a shop window shattered, the state gets another opportunity to castigate the entire protest movement as a hoard of violent extremists, and with it meter out a more brutal and oppressive police response.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.